[Ads-l] How Things Have Changed, As Illustrated by the Word "Jazz"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I had occasion to double-check many of Gold's citations and never found a
significant error.

It was one of the few pre-database slang dictionaries that could be taken
as authoritative in its day.

JL

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 8:03 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> I've been studying Robert S. Gold's 1975 book "Jazz Talk."  This is an
> historical dictionary with dated citations, and appears to have been
> thoroughly researched.  I of course do not criticize Gold for working in
> the pre-database era, but it is striking that his earliest citation for the
> musical word "jazz" itself is dated 1917.  Nowadays newspaper databases
> readily retrieve dozens of 1916 uses of musical "jazz" and one 1915 use.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org